So often we think of addiction in the terms of alcohol or drugs, but what about sugar?
While it does not have the same negative stigma as other drugs, sugar is just as addictive and responsible for many life threatening diseases and conditions.
“If you give rats the choice of white sugar and cocaine they will take the sugar.”
“It is a very life more threatening substance for some of us.”
Cradle My Heart host, Kim Ketola, counts herself as one of those at risk to sugar. She shares how feelings of being obsolete bought her to a place of addiction and isolation.
“I work from home, which is a fairly new development. I was always out in the workforce, and a lot of things came together a number of years ago where I actually felt obsolete and felt as though, ‘Okay, my career outside the home is over, my parents have passed, my children are launched…I don’t know what I’m going to do with the second half of my life because everything that I’ve spent my life learning how to do nobody needs me to do anymore…I don’t need to be a daughter…I don’t need to be a mommy.'”
“It was very crushing and this is really when the eating problem really began to develop, particularly being at home.”
Instead of turning to others for guidance or companionship, Kim turned to the momentary comfort provided by sugar. It is during times of transition that we are increasingly susceptible to developing unhealthy and sometimes dangerous habits.
“I would groove this little path between my work area and my kitchen. Whenever anything got the least bit challenging at my desk I was up sleepwalking to the kitchen looking for sugar.”
When Kim’s growing sugar-dependence and growing isolation finally collided, she knew it was time to ask for help.
“Hitting bottom was when I needed surgery because of arthritis and in the recovery phase I needed to go to the hospital for a follow up. The hospital was just a fifteen-minute ride and I had not one friend I could call to take me on a fifteen-minute ride from my home.”
“And so my isolation had become that heavy, and I realized I just I couldn’t do this anymore. I really needed to get a life, and so that’s really where the motivation came to finally admit to myself that I had a problem that I could you find a solution and I could stop doing that.”
